Understanding Sport Behavior: A Cognitive-Affective Processing Systems Approach

Recent developments in social-cognitive personality theory have promising applications to sport psychology. Of special significance is Mischel and Shoda's (1995) description of the Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS), a dynamic network of cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavior-generation units that interacts with situational factors to produce both coherence and cross-situational variability in behavior. Consistency in situation-behavior relations are demonstrated in individualized “behavioral signatures” of athletic coaches. The CAPS model has promise as a theoretical template within which domain-specific theoretical frameworks in sport psychology can be incorporated and expanded. To illustrate the potential utility of the CAPS model for construct elaboration, assessment of individual differences, and interventions in sport psychology, I apply it to an analysis of mental toughness and to performance anxiety, achievement goal theory, idiographic assessment, and psychological skills training. Finally, I suggest that “bottom-up” approaches to identifying causal mechanisms, exemplified by the CAPS and other social-cognitive models, can have considerable potential for theoretical, empirical, and applied advances in sport psychology.

This article is based in part on the Coleman Roberts Griffith Lecture delivered at the 2002 Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology. Preparation of this article and some of the research reported therein were supported by Grant #2297 from the William T. Grant Foundation.